How amazing to be allowed to do such a performance in Milan’s prime shopping locations where people lust after the most exquisite tableware. How powerful to deconstruct a whole dinner until the breakdown of all civilised behaviour. How fateful to find the perfect performers to act out the whole Culinary Dance Theater.
Here some still impressions:
click me for some moving images of the performance
Food and performance artist Caroline Hobkinson shows the intimate space of the dining table laid bare, deconstructed and broken. Is it a wedding? Is it a funeral? That’s for you to decide.
I designed the table in collaboration with my friend Georg Kayser @Circular Studio Barcelona.
Cant wait to see the finished object.
Today is the 1st of April 2042- the year of the three headed horse. 30 years since the short nuclear war between Iran and Israel, that rendered the middle east a No-Go Zone. The power of the United States and Europe has waned, and since the great wars that followed, and China’s inevitable victory, the way we eat has changed beyond recognition.
As you know Knives and Forks have become a thing of the past, we consider them old fashioned, embarrassing, only used behind closed doors. Imagine once half the world ate with these dangerous eating instruments! Even in Euro-canteens there is very little sign of plates and cutlery. In these back-room establishments, the old stodgy cuisine is eaten with chopsticks.
Milk, and most dairy products, intolerable to our Chinese rulers have become a thing of the past, the decadence of our western food has been replaced by our quick-snack raw food culture.
Due to a total global wheat intolerance cereal are no longer grown on Planet Earth.
Private dining has become outdated. In the past- everyone used to run their own kitchens. But running electricity, water and gas at home, is now an extravagance that none of us would ever dream of affording. Eating has become a public experience. In vast spelt noodle bars and karaoke canteens like the ones I’m sure you all ate your breakfast in. Only Brooklyn Beckham and Suri Cruise are rumoured to have kitchens at home.
It’s strange to imagine that Ikea used to sell kitchens!
They discontinued them in 2019.
It’s weird to think there used to be a whole culture of cookery books, and even television chefs.
Our canteens now serve us food that is based on our facebook profile while in the past people where left to ponder helplessly over listings of food called menus.
Some of the older generation still remember fish.
What survived the over-fishing was destroyed by the great storms of radiation that followed the conflicts of the 2020s.
Some Shanghai restaurants serve 4 headed Atlantic Salmon, but this dish is more for show than anything.
In the decontaminated zones of Earth, food is only allowed to travel the usual 50 miles. Lack of fuel has created an almost medieval culture of local farmers markets.
What started out as a lifestyle choice at the turn of the century has become a neccesity.
In-Vetro meat laboratories and huge hydroponic fruit and vegetable farms produce our food.
Every cut of meat is now grown in a test-tube or petri-dish. The exact amount of fat, bone and gristle is controlled by our computer bio-engeneering programmes. Just imagine people used to eat meat that was once living animals.
All of you know your local hydroponic.
Inside, under intense light they produce radiation free vegetables like soy,
pink kale, turnips sprouting broccoli and heritage tomotoes that supply the huge canteens we all eat at.
Due to the acidic atmosphere on the planet -citrus fruits combust automatically before they reach ripeness. They are now produced in less acidic atmospheres and therefore very rare.
Only the oldest in the room will remember Christmas. At this superstitious solstice festival, whole families would gather privately and eat huge amounts of food. Imagine – a WHOLE family of three, or even five, sitting around a table to eat in private, at home!
My great aunt told me about a drink called whiskey, the water of life made in land once known as Scotland. A place now with water so polluted – it can’t even be used for flushing the loo.
Our world used to be a strange old place then and we are definitely better off now. but in order to give you a taste of the past I have reconstructed a familiar food 30 years ago. Smoked salmon with lemon and Whiskey.
In the Petri dish in front of you will find a piece specially commissioned fish . Now extinct -fish is a food that used to be consumed by many species on earth. The word “fish” refers to both the animal and to the food prepared from it. Fish had been an important source of protein for humans throughout recorded history. A fish is an aquatic organism that lacks limbs with digits. This specimen here is called salmon,
this here is in it’s raw Sashimi form but people used to can salmon – smoke it or even cook it. (!)
in the Pipette you will find a portion of” I terrestial lemon juice”. Due to its high content in citric acid it’s impossible to be produced on earth. As you know most of our lemons now come from Mars but their taste is very different . These I terrestial lemons have a distinctive sour taste that used to be a key ingrerdient in many dishes around the world.
In the test tubes you will find the remains of the last bottles of whiskey on this planet. A 55 year old single malt whiskey known as Talisker. It was from the now flooded isle of skye.
Its a shame I cant give you forks – i just coudn’t risk it.
Squeeze the lemon onto your salmon. Place the salmon into your mouth & swallow. Open the test tube to drink the whiskey and savour the flavours of the past.
